Officials release details about Las Vegas shooter as death toll rises

MESQUITE, Nevada – In pre-dawn hours Monday, heavily armed police converged on the Mesquite retirement-community home of a man authorities say killed at least 58 people and injured at least 515 when he opened fire at a country-music concert in Las Vegas Sunday evening.

“Worst phone call a mother could receive,” Sue Reynolds, of Southern Utah, told St. George News Monday. “My daughter was in the middle of it. She called crying saying, ‘I love you, they’re killing everyone,’ as I hear gunfire and screaming in the background. She’s OK but the people next to her didn’t make it.”

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department identified the lone suspect involved in the late-night mass shooting as 64-year-old Stephen Craig Paddock, described by police as a white male from Mesquite, Nevada.

Mesquite Police Chief Troy Tanner said police, including detectives from Las Vegas and North Las Vegas, surrounded and entered Paddock’s single-family, one-story, three-bedroom home in the Sun City retirement community of Mesquite – the home where Paddock lived with 62-year-old Marilou Danley.

Danley was initially identified as a person of interest in connection with the shooting. Authorities did not find Danley at the Mesquite house and police saw “no movement” inside before serving a search warrant at the home, Tanner said. Police later said Danley is out of the country and that “detectives have made contact with her and do not believe she is involved with the shooting.”

“We have completed the search warrant in Mesquite,” Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said during a press conference Monday. “I am not aware of any derogatory information that we can utilize to the furtherance of this investigation at this point. But we have just recovered items and it will take a little while to evaluate that information.”

The shooting

Paddock opened fire Sunday evening on a crowd of more than 22,000 concert-goers from a hotel room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police and SWAT officers responded, breached the hotel room and found him dead, Lombardo said, adding that more than 10 rifles were found at the scene.

Police officers stand at the scene of a shooting near the Mandalay Bay resort and casino on the Las Vegas Strip, Sunday, Oct. 1, 2017, in Las Vegas. Multiple victims were being transported to hospitals after a shooting late Sunday at a music festival on the Las Vegas Strip. | AP Photo by John Locher, St. George News

Authorities said they believe Paddock killed himself prior to police entry.

Paddock, who has no known criminal history, checked into the hotel Thursday and brought the guns in himself, officials said. Authorities believe Paddock used a device similar to a hammer to smash the hotel room windows.

Eric Paddock said he helped Stephen Paddock move to Mesquite about a year ago, noting, “He had no machine guns when I moved him from Melbourne to Mesquite.”

Their father was a bank robber who spent years on the FBI’s most-wanted list, said brother Eric Paddock. The FBI lists the late Benjamin Hoskins Paddock as being on the FBI’s most-wanted list from June 10, 1969, until May 5, 1977.

Benjamin Paddock operated an Oregon bingo parlor after escaping from a Texas prison in the late 1960s, according to The Associated Press. FBI agents arrested Patrick Benjamin Paddock on Sept. 6, 1978, at the Bingo Center in the small city of Springfield.

Benjamin Paddock was paroled the following year and returned to Oregon. He continued the bingo operation until authorities shut it down in 1987 and charged him with racketeering.

Despite his father’s criminal history, Stephen Paddock had no federal, state or local history with law enforcement before Sunday night’s shooting.

Chris Michel, owner of Dixie GunWorx in St. George, told St. George News he once sold a gun to Stephen Paddock.

“I recognized him immediately … he’s been in my store … we sold him a shotgun,” Michel said.

The owner of a gun shop in Mesquite, Nevada, said Stephen Paddock bought firearms there and never gave any indication that he might have been unstable, according to The Associated Press.

Guns & Guitars general manager Christopher Sullivan said in a statement Monday that Stephen Paddock showed no signs of being unfit to buy guns.

Store spokesman Shawn Vincent declined comment on how many guns Paddock bought and said those details could only be shared with authorities. Sullivan says all necessary background checks and procedures were followed under local, state and federal laws and that he’s cooperating fully with law enforcement.

Stephen Paddock had worked as an accountant – and public records showed he held both a pilot’s license and a hunting license, according to ABC News. He was also employed by defense contractor Lockheed Martin between 1985 and 1988.

Blood donations

The hundreds of people who were wounded during the shooting rampage were taken to five southern Nevada hospitals, and officials said blood donations are needed.

“We are asking to solely utilize United Blood Services for blood donations and the UMC to donate blood,” Lombardo said Monday.

Anyone wishing to help is asked to donate blood for the injured victims at United Blood Services located at 6930 W. Charleston in Las Vegas or 601 Whitney Ranch Drive in Henderson, Nevada.

University Medical Center is also hosting a blood drive in conjunction with United Blood Services and is being held at UMC’s Delta Point Building located at 901 N. Rancho Lane, Las Vegas.

Counseling services

Major Lisa Smith with the Salvation Army of Mesquite reached out to the Mesquite Police Department to notify community members that free counseling services will be offered by the organization to those who have been affected by the tragic events in Las Vegas.

Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2017, all rights reserved.

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About the Author

Kimberly Scott is a lifetime resident of Southern Utah. In 2013, Kimberly joined St. George News as a vital member of its editing, reporting and administrative team. She is passionate about engaging communities through writing and is dedicated to providing complete and accurate coverage of both anticipated and breaking news.

7 Comments

I wonder if he was dead before or after the shooting started, this reeks of a classic psyop. It will almost certainly be used to get people to forfeit rights in some way. Now we can add him to the list of “lone gunmen”: Timothy MacVeigh, Osama bin Laden, Lee Harvey Oswald, Ted Kaczynski, James Eagan Holmes, and Adam Lanza (among others). It gives you singular point to focus your fear and anger on while the powers that shouldn’t be do what they do; like kill millions of brown people in the name of freedom.

Osama was not a loan gunman, in fact I don’t know if they have been able to prove he ever shot anyone. He was the leader because he was the one with the money. His bodyguards did most of the nasty stuff. Technically neither was Mcveigh as he had an accomplice, Terry Nicols, who was put on trial and convicted of 161 counts of 1st degree murder.

it does have all the hallmarks of a psyop. As far as if it actually was, we’ll never know. It’s possible it was a “lone gunman” in this case, but I really don’t trust the media or our gov’t to give us the full story. There’s a lot of logistics that would go into planning something like this and quite a lot of forethought. If it wasn’t a psyop this “lone gunman” was quite the little psychopath. No doubt they’ll use this event to take away more freedoms from citizens–one step closer to a police state.